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by jezek2 647 days ago
Yeah, but such concerns are from a long ago and it didn't happen yet. So the best approach is (and has been) to just support the platform until it is not possible anymore and don't be emotional about it. We just know that one (still quite distant) day it will happen.

Then the usage of the platform will end for many users & developers. One could still live a quite long time on the older systems to ease the transition out.
2 comments
raxxorraxor 647 days ago
But why should I develop for a platform that is doomed to be shitty in the near future.

I do create macOS binaries, although they mostly are just a byproduct if targeting it is trivial. Of course I do not sign any of them, to me that is more or less a scam comparable to ransomware.

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jezek2 647 days ago
Totally understandable. My motivation is that I want to reach out to the users as much as possible, doing an extra amount of work if needed. They benefit from cross-platform applications. And I need it to do just once in my programming language as any application using it benefits automatically.

This way I support Windows 2000 or newer, MacOS 10.6+, up to 15 years old Linux distributions with the same small binary for each platform, I did an extra mile in supporting WebAssembly target so it's easy to compile the applications to the web. This also allows to create applications for smartphones without the need for approval and having to follow any weird arbitrary rules.

Why support such old versions? Real world users are often stuck with old versions for various reasons, it's a minority of users but they can be the most important ones. And technically because the difference between these old systems and new systems is not that big. Often it just means to use some older API or do a few extra steps. It's all hidden in code that handles multiplatform stuff so it's not in the way. It doesn't add bloat either.

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IshKebab 647 days ago
> Yeah, but such concerns are from a long ago and it didn't happen yet.

Well yeah because they are very sensibly doing it extremely slowly. Microsoft is doing the same thing; they're just a fair bit behind Apple.

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